Читать книгу A Fragile Hope - Cynthia Ruchti - Страница 7

Grace outdistances you. It runs ahead to meet you at the intersection of your next need.

~ Seedlings & Sentiments

from the “Time of Need” collection

Quarter to eleven. It had taken him an hour and a half to make the thirty-five miles. All of it maneuvered hunched over the steering wheel, peering out at the slick night, fighting to keep the white line in sight. Woodlands? Why hadn’t the ambulance taken her to Paxton’s medical center? Sure it was small, understaffed, with limited hours of operation. Could that have been the reason? One of many unanswered questions. Like, who was driving Karin’s car? It was Karin’s car, the deputy said. But she was a passenger? Why?

The hospital parking lot, with a glaze of ice over the parked cars and security lights, looked as eerie as a Hitchcock film. He guessed where the lines of demarcation defined parking spaces. His foot slipped as he stepped out of his Camry. The lot was worse off than the highway.

Sliding the last few feet into the emergency room entrance, his breath heavy and inefficient, Josiah bit back a fist of fear. He ripped the boiled wool cap off his head and, twisting it in his hands, asked the woman at the “All visitors please check in here” desk where he could find his wife.

A question he’d asked himself all night.

“Please take a seat in one of the green chairs,” she said. “I’ll let them know you’re here.”

Was that sadness he read in her eyes? Sympathy? Had she recognized him as the face she’d seen on the back cover of innumerable books? That might explain the added layer of concern. Or did the thick slabs of eye shadow weigh her eyes down at the corners?

Green chairs. Retaining imprints of past sitters. He’d stand, thank you. A bearded guy slumped in one of the chairs in the corner brought Rip Van Winkle to mind. How many years had the man slept stretched out like that—legs crossed at the ankles, arms folded over his chest, hat brim low to shield him from fluorescence—waiting for the answer to his emergency room question?

He woke Karin’s mom and dad before he left for the hospital. His phone call said little more than, “I don’t know anything.” A call to Morris could wait until he got some answers.

Josiah smelled coffee. Harsh, aged coffee. Better than nothing. Complimentary, the sign said. He took a waxed cup from a tilting stack and poured coffee from a quarter-full glass carafe. The cup warmed his stiff hands. In his hurry to leave the house, he’d forgotten gloves. His Columbia jacket hung open. Expelling breath and emotion through dry lips, he pressed the coffee cup to the frozen tundra around his heart.

What was he supposed to feel? Besides numb. In the whole long trip, he’d mastered one thing: numb.

Josiah made a living off his creative imagination. Tonight it was not his friend. What-ifs stung him like fire ants. Sting, pain, itch.

What if Karin didn’t make it? How could he live with himself for not taking her absence more seriously, for not going out to look for her, or calling the authorities right away? He’d been miffed that she hadn’t been waiting for him when he finished his project. She’d tried to hint that he’d become self-absorbed. He’d jotted a note to consider a section on the subject for an upcoming seminar.

The deputy said Karin and another person were in the accident. He said person, not woman. What did that mean? It was a man? A man was driving her car? That made no more sense than anything else in this muddle.

Karin must have had a flat. The guy—a good Samaritan—stopped to help her and then got behind the wheel to drive her home? No. No, that didn’t add up. She ran out of gas and—No. It was her car. With some man other than Josiah behind the wheel. An unsent text message? What? The person had been texting and driving? In an ice storm?

Josiah needed answers. Right after he found out that Karin was going to be okay. She’d be okay. She had to.

What was taking so long? The deputy insinuated he’d had to sort through who to call, since the natural assumption would have been that she and the driver were friends. Or related. Involved. Together on purpose. Crazy talk. Maybe the staff was confused. He could clear it up if someone would let him speak.

His mind drafted the imaginary conversation going on somewhere beyond the visitor’s desk:

Her husband’s here.

Isn’t that her husband? The one she came in with?

Uh, no. Must be boyfriend.

Ooh. Sticky.

Yup. Now what?

We ask one of them to leave?

Which one?

Flip a coin.

He shook the false assumption dialogue from his head. The first sip of coffee burned the taste buds off the front of his tongue and stripped the lining of his throat. The pain felt good.

The phone again. Worship song he’d once found soothing. He’d have to invest in a different ringtone.

“Josiah?” The female voice on the phone trembled with more than old age’s vibrato.

“Mom.” He sighed. This must be killing her.

“How’s my daughter?”

Josiah flared his nostrils in search of a deep enough breath to support his words. “Still don’t know yet.”

“Where are you? At the hospital?”

“I got here a few minutes ago. They haven’t told me anything.” Saying it cemented it.

“What was Karin doing out alone on a night like this?”

Alone. If only. Josiah rubbed the back of his neck. “There’ll be time for all that later. Right now, we just need to—”

“Did you say Woodlands Regional, dear?”

“Yes, Mom. But don’t you and Dad try to make it tonight. The roads are slick as a hockey rink.”

“No, I know we can’t come tonight. They’ve closed the interstate, we heard. We’re so grateful you made it.” The woman’s voice disappeared into the abyss of distress with which Josiah was already familiar.

“Josiah, you’ll call us when you hear something? Anything?”

“Of course. Don’t worry.” Fat chance. “Maybe I’ll have her call you herself when they let me in to see her.”

In the silence, Josiah heard the sound of Karin’s mom’s courage wrestling with fright. He pictured her bent in half over the phone. “I pray it’s that simple.”

Oh, this is so much more complicated than you’d ever imagine. “Try to get some rest.”

“You know better than that.”

Josiah allowed himself a faux chuckle. “Yes, I certainly do. Love you.”

“Love you, too, dear. Give my daughter a kiss when you see her.”

A kiss? What would Josiah see in Karin’s eyes if he tried? The idea lay crosswise in his throat, a fish bone of uncertainty. Too many unanswered questions.

The second hand on the emergency room wall clock ticked in spasms. The minute and hour hands seemed not to move at all. Twenty-four hour days. Double dark forty-eight hour nights. The math didn’t work, but the truth of an unmoving clock overrides math.

Josiah cocked his head from side to side, stretching the tight cords in his neck. He leaned forward and rested his forearms on his knees. His hands hung useless. Some protector he turned out to be.

Words. He’d focused his life on teasing words into sentences, sentences into paragraphs. While he did, had another man whispered something in Karin’s ear? Something she believed? Josiah wasn’t a jealous man, or suspicious, but that one word choice—person—had sent him somewhere he’d never been. Not a good place.

“Mr. Chamberlain?”

Josiah bolted to his feet and faced the source of the voice. “Yes, that’s me.”

“I’m Lane Stephens.” The gaunt man tugged at the v-neck of his shadow-blue scrubs. The fabric at that spot bore a permanent crease, as if Dr. Stephens often pinched his scrub top when about to dispense bad news. “Sorry to keep you waiting.”

Josiah’s response dug its claws into the muscles around his vocal cords and refused to move.

“Mr. Chamberlain, your wife sustained serious injuries in the accident. We’ve addressed the most life-threatening as best we can for the time being. I’ll need you to sign this consent. She’s not stable but we really have no choice. She’s on her way to surgery now. We have to get the bleeding in her brain under control or—”

No. No, no, no, no—Josiah took the tablet and stared at the digital electronic consent form’s swimming words.

“—there will be even less hope than there is now. I’m sorry. I wish I could have brought you more encouraging news.”

A cloud of overworked deodorant followed Dr. Stephens down the hall. The man was sweating. Not a good sign.

What had he said after “Wish I could have brought you more encouraging news”? Did he tell Josiah to wait somewhere else? Was he supposed to follow? No. He said surgery. How soon? How long? How did a thing like this happen?

Horror-movie fog started at the top of his head and crept downward, engulfing every cell in its path. He stood where the doctor had left him, one more stone pillar around which the emergency room traffic flowed as if it had no eye for architectural detail. He heard sounds. But like all pillars worth their salt, he was not fazed by them.

His inattention or some other unnamed sin pushed Karin into the path of an oncoming car. Correction. Oncoming tree.

Somewhere behind a door or curtain Josiah’s broken wife awaited rescue. And he couldn’t do a thing to save her.

Broken wife. Broken life.

“Mr. Chamberlain, I’ll show you where to wait.”

A spot of warmth on his shoulder. A woman’s hand.

“I’ll show you where you can wait for your wife while she’s in surgery. You may want to take time now though to get something to eat. Would you like me to direct you to the cafeteria?”

What meal falls at half past disbelief? “No, thank you. Are you a nurse?” He took in her John Deere–green uniform top stretched over a belly so distended that her navel stood out like a conceited grape. “Can you tell me what happened to her?”

“I’m a unit clerk. You have more questions than we have answers right now. These initial hours are always distressing. Through here.” She slapped the flat, plate-sized disk on the wall and a door opened before them. “Take the elevator to the second floor. Once there, you’ll see signs directing you to the surgery waiting room.”

He must have hesitated a nanosecond too long. She reached to depress the Up button for him. Then, with a pat on his arm and a standard-issue “Don’t worry,” she was gone.

He should have asked her name. And thanked her. And said, “You told me where to wait. Now can you tell me how?”

The surgery waiting room embraced him coolly, like a cursory hug from an estranged relative. It tried. He had to give it that. Tasteful couches and love seats. Low coffee tables built sturdy to support tired feet and tired magazines. An espresso machine. Nice touch. As if fancy coffee could erase pain better than plain.

Four hours into the wait, Josiah repented of letting all that coffee bean acid slosh around his stomach unaccompanied by real food to neutralize it. He found a vending machine and punched B-12 for the least offensive-looking sandwich. Turkey something on used whole wheat sponges. He remembered removing the cellophane and sticking it in his pocket for lack of a conveniently located wastebasket. He remembered because a faint, bordering-on-noxious onion odor accompanied him like a cloud of bad cologne as he paced. He didn’t recall eating the sandwich, but his tongue worked to free a limp sliver of lettuce from between his teeth.

How sad was it that the stark aloneness he felt in the waiting room in the middle of the night appealed more than having to make conversation, even with a friend? He kept trying Leah’s number. No response. While Karin fought for her life, Leah and Wade must have gotten away together, somewhere out of the reach of cyber connections. Josiah owed Karin a real vacation, some serious togetherness time.

His friends. Who could he have called at that hour to say, “Hey, buddy. Will you just sit with me here? Don’t have to talk. Don’t want to talk. Just sit here”? Maybe Nate. Some college friendships last forever, despite distance and the passage of time. And neglect. Josiah’s and Nate’s paths rarely crossed these days. But Nate was steady, solid as they came. And their history together bridged all gaps in time. Does he still live in Baltimore? I should know a detail like that.

He could think of only one person who would crawl out of bed in the middle of the night and drive across the country in this weather just because he needed a companion. Karin. That’s what made all the suspicious part of her untold story so ludicrous. So impossible to consider.

His gut ached from stiffening against suspicion.

Near dawn, he slipped his fingers through the slats on the plastic blinds at the street-side window. The room faced east. He waited in the path of a rising sun chasing the night’s storm into submission. This close to spring, the glazed-donut crust of ice wouldn’t last long. It would soon mutate into puddles and clogged storm sewers. He could be out in that, scraping his windshield, checking his supply of wiper fluid, dodging ankle-deep potholes of icy slush.

Instead, he waited to hear if his wife would survive until the rooster’s crow. If she did, would she deny she ever knew him? Would she offer an explanation that made sense out of all this?

He didn’t need an explanation. He needed her to be alive.

Wrong. He needed an explanation, too. Something simple. Coincidental. Laughable. Anything but the thought that wormed its way deeper into his core—that she was with someone else on purpose.

About last night, Josiah.

Yes?

That’s all the further he dared envision the conversation. Other men had been blindsided. He’d listened to their oblivion and disbelief. Counseled them. Brought them to reality and emotional breaking points so their marriage could start to rebuild. That’s not what he and Karin needed. Couldn’t be.

The temptation to search the hospital for a loser with a messed up face, maybe a broken leg or something, pressed strong. But Josiah couldn’t afford to miss the moment Karin came out of surgery. Getting the driver’s story would have to wait.

Okay, Karin. I do need an explanation.

Josiah’s imagination argued pointlessly with a woman whose brain was leaking or swelling or whatever brains do when they’ve been shaken like a maraca.

His stomach churned. His turkey wanted out.

A hospital staff member with Housekeeping embroidered on her unisex polo breast pocket pushed a wheeled cart into the surgery waiting alcove. She bent to pick up a scrap of paper and deposited it in the waste receptacle on her cart. Josiah let the window slats rattle back into their resting position and met her at the cart with his sandwich cellophane. The offending odor now gone, his stomach could right itself. Unless the surgeon walking toward him had news to match his graveyard facial expression.

The soles of Josiah’s feet itched, as if begging him to run before the surgeon started speaking. Josiah would have shaken his hand, but his palms had gone from bone dry to damp as a Brazilian jungle floor at the sight of the man with news. He crossed his arms and stuck his hands in his armpits. Swayed back and forth. Yeah, that looks natural. He stopped swaying and let his hands fall to his sides.

Focus, man. The good doctor’s talking.

“Remarkably, we were able to save the child, for now at least.”

The woman’s thirty-four, Doc. Hardly a child.

“If your wife had been farther along, we might not have been so fortunate. Especially in light of all the pelvic trauma.”

“Farther along?”

“The abdominal impact was absorbed by your wife’s body, not the baby’s.”

A tremor shook Josiah’s skeleton loose from its moorings. Freight train? Earthquake? “Karin?”

Dr. Whatshisname’s plastic smile showed far less energy than it must have taken to produce it. “She’s in recovery. I’m sorry I can’t let you see her yet. As soon as we have her—”

“I want to know what happened to her.” Josiah winced at the taste of bile his inflection produced.

The surgeon tugged at his v-neck and drew in a breath that when expelled smelled of Mentos and sadness. “Her brain injuries are by far our gravest concern.” His eyes widened as if horrified at his use of the word grave. “In addition to the baby, of course.”

Freight train. Definitely a freight train. “There was a child with her?”

“Let’s find a place where we can talk in private.” The doctor cupped Josiah’s elbow and steered him toward an open door that led to the world’s smallest conference room. Three chairs of the same ilk as those in the waiting alcove. An end table. A lamp. Not that it shed appreciable light.

The child was not in the car with Karin. It was inside her. Inside her.

And medical science told him it couldn’t be his.